Written by David Milliken
LONDON (Reuters) – Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he will go to the Netherlands in March 2021 to secure 5 million coronavirus vaccines that the European Union had threatened to ban exports to Britain. He said he had ordered military leaders to plan attacks on factories.
Mr Johnson said Lieutenant General Doug Chalmers, Britain’s deputy chief of defense staff at the time, had told him that a raid using small boats across the English Channel and through canals in the Netherlands was also possible, but he was not sure about the diplomatic implications. He said he had warned him.
Johnson said Chalmers, who is now retired from the military, said it would be impossible for him to carry out his mission without being detected, and that “if he were detected, he would not know why he was effectively invading a long-time NATO ally.” I guess I’ll have to explain.” ”.
“I secretly agreed with what everyone was thinking but didn’t want to say out loud: that everything was wrong,” Johnson said in an excerpt of his memoir published in Saturday’s Daily Mail. spoke.
Neither the Ministry of Defense nor Mr Chalmers, who currently chairs the government’s committee on standards in public life, had any immediate comment on Mr Johnson’s explanation.
The disputed coronavirus vaccine was developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca, but the doses were manufactured by subcontractors in the Netherlands and Britain.
In March 2021, the vaccine was widely used in the UK, but doses produced at a factory in the Netherlands were still awaiting EU approval.
Britain and the EU both had vaccine deals with AstraZeneca, but the EU sought to hold the finished vaccine at a factory in the Netherlands for future use there.
Mr Johnson was elected in December 2019 on a promise to conclude long-running Brexit negotiations, but EU officials say they are acting under pressure from French President Emmanuel Macron. I showed my point of view.
“After two months of fruitless negotiations, I have come to the conclusion that the EU is treating us with malice and spite… because we were vaccinating our people much faster than our own people,” he said in 2016. said Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who was forced to resign in 2016. Scandals followed in 2022, including breaches of coronavirus lockdown rules.
(Reporting by David Milliken; Editing by Helen Popper)
